


Hustle

by Siria



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 11:57:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10921350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: "You miscalculated the angle on your seventh shot," Sherlock tells her.





	Hustle

**Author's Note:**

> Written for estefee to the prompt, "Joan as a pool hustler, Holmes owns the bar. Clyde is the bar's mascot."

"You miscalculated the angle on your seventh shot," Sherlock tells her.  
  
"I won," Joan says, hooking her foot around the nearest bar stool and pulling it towards her. She sits and takes a swig of her beer. It's good. Like most of the beers kept in stock at 221B, the name on the label isn't a brand she recognises; then again, she's fairly certain that Sherlock is running a dubiously legal microbrewery in the bar's basement.  
  
"And yet that doesn't negate the fact that had you adjusted the angle of your shot by three degrees, and maintained better form through your elbow," Sherlock says as he mixes up a concoction that looks dubious and smells like paint stripper, "that you could have had the 5-ball rebound at a more acute angle and send the 9-ball into the corner pocket. As a matter of pure aesthetics, the geometry would have been more pleasing. Not to mention that you would have extricated yourself from contact with that oaf several minutes sooner."  
  
"I don't know that I want to take advice on aesthetics from a shirtless bartender," Joan says. She snags a pretzel from the bowl being carried past, balanced on top of the dome of Clyde's shell.  
  
"My father plans to surprise me with a visit shortly," Sherlock says, sliding the finished drink—now a lurid green and frothing in a way that has Joan mildly concerned—down the bar top to one of the regulars. "What better way to convince him of the sincerity of my professed commitment to my doctoral studies than having him spot my newest back tattoo for the first time while I stand in the midst of a den of iniquity? I anticipate that it should inspire his most stentorian tones."  
  
"Uh huh," Joan says. 221B is close enough to campus that things get a little rowdy sometimes, but mostly it's patronised by pretentious hipsters who like to debate the _terroir_ of the herb blends that Sherlock adds to his brews, and who lose enough money to Joan at pool that she thinks she's on track to pay off the bulk of her student loans almost before she graduates. A den of iniquity this place is not, but she long ago gave up on trying to fathom the twists and turns of a Holmes family spat. "You know, you could just talk to him."  
  
"True," Sherlock says. He is very carefully wiping down the bar top with an old rag. Stripped of one of his usual tighly buttoned shirts, he should seem more vulnerable, but it doesn't take an A in Psych 101 to understand that tattoos can be their own form of armour. Even less when you know, as Joan does, what name is now hidden beneath the tangle of monochrome roots that crawl along Sherlock's spine.

"And yet," Sherlock continues, " _in cervesa veritas_. You are not the only one to miscalculate your angles occasionally."  
  
Joan cocks her head. She worries about him. "You don't drink."  
  
"Though in your case," Sherlock says with a tight little half smile, flinging the sodden rag into the sink, "I emphasise the "occasionally.""


End file.
